The case for the Defendants

5.232The Defendants maintain that this amounts to an admission by Hitler that had used inhumane means to remove (that is, to kill) the Jews. They contend that Irving obfuscates the true sense of what Hitler was saying at p631 of Hitler's War (1977 edition). Irving there prefaces his quotation from Hitler's speech with the comment that Hitler was speaking "in terms that were both philosophical and less ambiguous". He writes that Hitler was speaking of the reasons why he had "expelled" the Jews. The Defendants argue that by these devices Irving sought to blunt the significance of the reference by Hitler to the "extirpation" of the Jews.